Farther down, near Charley’s shuttered taco stand, a slender woman stood alone, long blond hair ruffling in the breeze, shoulders slumped, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket. Though her face wasn’t visible, her posture communicated dejection—at the very least.
But he hadn’t brought Isabel here to dwell on depressing emotions. The whole purpose of this Thursday father-daughter early dinner date while Gramp met a friend for pizza was to perk her up.
It had worked too.
She’d chatted enthusiastically at the Myrtle Café, eaten every bite of her meatloaf entrée, and had remained animated while they strolled down to the wharf after dessert.
Until now.
“Maybe she’s just tired.” Aaron pointed overhead, above the long jetty on the left and the pair of rocky islands on the right that protected the marina. “Look at those two seagulls. They’re putting on an acrobatic show for us.”
After sparing the dipping and wheeling birds a fleeting glance, Isabel refocused on the woman, brow wrinkling as she swung her leg and scuffed the toe of her shoe on the pavement. “She doesn’t look tired to me. She looks lonesome—and kind of like she wants to cry.”
Aaron stared at his daughter.
Seriously?
How could she pick up on all that from this far away?
But rather than attempt to distract her, this could be an opportunity to draw her out about her own feelings, as the counselor had encouraged.
Even if he’d prefer to end this outing on a more upbeat note.
“Why do you think that?” He rested his arm on the back of the bench behind her, keeping his tone casual and conversational.
“I don’t know.” Isabel studied the woman. “Watching her makes my stomach feel empty, even though I just ate.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “That’s the same way it feels when I think about Mom.”
The heavy meal he’d ingested hardened into a rock in his own stomach. “I know you miss her, sweetie.” He moved his hand to her slight shoulder and gently tugged her closer beside him.
“I used to miss her before the accident too. She was gone a lot.”
That was true. And it had been a frequent source of conflict in their marriage.
But his suggestion that she take advantage of her IT firm’s openness to remote work and rely more on video conferencing for meetings and client interactions had always elicited the same response.
“Face-to-face contact is critical,especially for a business development manager. You may not have any ambition to climb the corporate ladder,but I do. Success is important to me.”
Their increasingly divergent definitions of success had also been a bone of contention—and another source of rancor.
“How come Mom had to travel all the time?” Isabel searched his face.
Aaron swallowed past the sour taste in his mouth. He may not have agreed with Olivia’s career-related choices, but sharing that opinion would serve no positive purpose with their daughter. “She had a busy job, honey.”
“I know. She always told me that.” Isabel dipped her chin and played with a loose button on her jacket. “But sometimes I wonder if I ... I didn’t love her enough. Maybe if I’d loved her more, she wouldn’t have traveled as much. And maybe she wouldn’t have been driving home from the airport the night of the accident.”
His throat clogged.
Had Isabel been carrying around a boatload of undeserved guilt ever since Olivia died?
What kind of father was he to have been oblivious to her feelings of culpability?
“Honey, you loved her with all your heart, and she knew that.” He squeezed her shoulder, voice rasping. “What happened to your mom had nothing to do with you. All the trips she took were part of her job.”
“I guess.” She sniffed. “I missed her when she was gone for work, but it’s a different kind of missing when you know someone is never coming back.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Do you think she’s happy?”
